


To Live Without Shame

by dyad (johnnycake)



Category: Atonement (2007)
Genre: Angst, CPTSD, Consumption, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Illness, Mentions of Rape, Trauma, War, mentions of child abuse, tuberculosis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-10-25 08:40:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20721356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/johnnycake/pseuds/dyad
Summary: "Dearest Cecilia,The story can resume,ourstory can resume, the one I had been planning on that evening walk. I can become again the man who once crossed the Surrey park at dusk in my best suit, swaggering on the promise of life; the man who, with the clarity of passion, made love to you in the library. The story can resume. I will return. I will find you, love you, marry you, and live without shame.The story can resume, I will simply resume."Robbie didn't die on Bray Beach in Dunkirk and Cecilia didn't drown in the Balham tube tunnels. But they face other trials and tribulations as life moves on, learning that rekindling their old life is not as simple as just being free.





	1. Prologue: Three Years After, Six Months Before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have no idea how long this is going to be or if i'll even ever finish it, but i'm hoping that i will. i have such a wonderful plan for this fanfiction.

_January 12th, 1940_

_London, England_

If anyone had asked Robbie exactly how much time had passed since he’d been sentenced and jailed (without a trial, mind), he could’ve rattled the numbers off exactly. It didn’t seem to matter how much he tried to forget how much time it had been (three and a half years almost exactly plus two weeks, one day, fourteen hours, and seventeen minutes), he knew that for as long as he lived, he would never forget. He would never forget all that had happened inside either, things that made his difficult upbringing with his father look like a picnic.

All more things he would rather forget, things he knew never could.

It had been two weeks into the month of January, three years and six months after arriving at the prison that a Naval officer had come to his cell and given him an impossible choice: stay in prison or leave and join the army, fight overseas, and maybe, just maybe, be released indefinitely on parole once the fighting was over. If he were to be perfectly honest, he didn’t want to fight. He didn’t want to go overseas and kill men that likely wanted to be there as little as he did, but staying in jail was no longer an option.

Stay in jail any longer and he would be dead within another year, that he knew.

So despite his misgivings, despite being warned that he would never be eligible for officer training, never given more than the bare minimum due to his status as a convict (one of the rape of a child no less), he had jointed the army.

He had been sent to an accelerated boot camp for convicts. It would seem the Royal British Army was not concerned about convicts being trained as well as regular soldiers. They were, after all, just battle fodder, more bodies to throw at the enemy. No good deeds any of them did in war would ever be remembered no matter how heroic. They were the lowest of the low and sending them overseas to die didn’t keep the heads of Britain awake at night, not in the slightest.

It was the letters that had kept him alive through the hopelessness of it all. Cecilia’s letters, written in her delicate cursive hand. She wasn’t allowed to visit him and he was barely allowed to write back, but nearly every day he received a new letter from her, telling him how much she loved him, how much she missed him, how much she wished she could be with him again.

_Come back, _was how her letters always ended. _Come back to me. _

_I will __return,_ he’d thought, holding the letters against his chest at night when there was no one awake to take them from him, his eyes closed tight, his brows drawn together as if in pain. _I will __return, Cecilia__, I swear it._

He’d never known if this silent promise was anything he could keep, but he had known when the Naval officer arrived, giving him that inexplicable choice, it was his one, last, desperate hope of finding his way back to her and by god, he was going to take it. If it killed him, destroyed all that remained of what he was, he was going to take it.

The last letter he had sent had been giving Cecilia word that his boot camp training would be done in a few days and he would have one day in London before being shipped out overseas to fight in France. She had replied almost immediately, asking him to meet her at a cafe inside a large building that housed much more than just the cafe. He had replied as quickly as she had, his words scribbled and the paper blotted with ink, promising to meet her there.

They wouldn’t have much time together, but it would have to be enough.

He would have to savor the time he had with her and put things right once the war was over, once he was released from duty and, god willing, released from prison on parole.

Only a few days later, he was released from boot camp, given his private’s uniform, and allowed one day to wander London, see all that had changed in the three years he was locked up, before being told to report for duty at six in the evening on the dot.

Against his better judgment, Robbie wandered around London, looking in shop windows, staring at how the downtown area had changed so drastically since the war had begun. Sandbags were piled high around buildings, soldiers were stationed everywhere – soldiers with much higher rankings than he would ever be able to achieve – and people hurried to and from their destinations with their heads down, speaking little and, if at all, in hushed tones. The only sounds surrounding him were those of the city (cars driving by, planes droning overhead, footsteps on pavement), the low babble of conversation was absent from the world now, everyone too on edge, all waiting to hear the next air raid siren, everyone gazing at the buildings they passed, examining the facades for the signs that marked them as a shelter in case of bombings.

It seemed the world had come apart as the seams in the past three years much as he had.

Finally, having seen more than enough, Robbie made his way to the address Cecilia had given him, having to double back and retrace his steps several times before he finally found the correct building. Even then he asked the soldier at the door if it was the right place. The soldier gave him a funny look before nodding curtly and telling him to go all the way to the end of the hall. The cafe was on the right, recognizable by its large glass front and name, embossed and etched into the glass. Robbie nodded once, his eyes falling to the ground, and made his way to the cafe.

When he came upon the cafe, he stared in the large glass windows and, surprising himself, was immediately able to pick Cecilia out of the crowd. She had her back turned, but it was unmistakably her. Her hair had grown out and she wore the uniform of a nurse ward sister. Something about her appearance, something he could not place, broke his heart.

She sat up a little taller as he stood there, staring at her, and then, seeming to sense his presence, turned her head.

Robbie couldn’t take it anymore. He doubled back, stopping in front of the supply closet, his hand on the door, foolishly wanting to open it and hide in there instead of see her and face all of the emotions that were already warring inside him.

He took his hand off the handle, pressed it to the wood of the door, and then his forehead, his eyes shutting tight, his brows drawing together as if in pain. He took a deep breath, steadying himself and then turned around, going back the way he had come, his fist pressed to his mouth, his eyes still closed, if only for a moment, fighting off a wave of nervous nausea.

When he stopped in front of the large glass doors this time and peered in, Cecilia was standing, facing him, the expression on her face unreadable, her eyes wide, her lips covered in lipstick so red, it stood out on her pale face like war paint.

Robbie froze, staring at her, her mere imagetaking his breath away.

She was beautiful.

The glass door to his right opened as one of the serving girls opened it for him. He glanced briefly in her direction, muttered a quiet _Thank you_, and stepped into the cafe, his eyes shifting immediately back to Cecilia. His gaze never left her as he maneuvered his way through the closely set tables and their patrons. Suddenly the room seemed entirely too loud after the silence of London, after the three years of near silence in prison. It was as though all the low babble that had been absent outside had been packed into this small space and he had to clench his hands into fists to keep himself from pressing his hands over his ears or even gasping. Everything was suddenly far too much.

His paces slowed as he approached her, turning around one table nearly at a snail’s pace. The closer he got to her, the more blinded he was by her beauty. All at once, he imagined, as he had so many times in jail, everything they could’ve had if things had turned out differently. He blinked and saw himself sleeping next to her in her family’s mansion. Another blink and they were standing before an altar, Cecilia dressed in white, he in black. Another blink and they were now in a house of their own with two children, two boys, Cecilia laughing as she cooked dinner, Robbie laughing as he played with the children at the dining table. Another blink and he was standing before her and all those dreamed fantasies evaporated into harsh reality.

None of that had ever happened, maybe now it never would.

Robbie swallowed and said in a voice that felt and sounded to his ears far too formal and yet not formal enough, “I’m sorry I’m late, I got lost.”

“Hello,” Cecilia said quickly, her tone full of all the anxieties he was repressing.

He took a breath. “Hello.” That same formal tone.

Then there was silence between them, Cecilia’s brown eyes were wide, her bright red lips parted slightly as she took him in. Robbie had seen himself in the mirror, he knew what she would see: he’d lost weight, enough to be noticeable, but not enough to be concerning; his uniform, a muddy brown, his triangular private’s hat sitting atop his head, a small golden pin fastened to it, designating his rank; the scar, just above his eyebrow, far enough down that it cut into it, making a small bald spot above his eye that would be there forever, a constant reminder of where he had been, what he had seen.

She seemed to, inexplicably, be just as transfixed by him as he was by her.

Her lips closed slowly. Robbie realized his brows were still drawn together, creating a permanent wrinkle between them, his lips set by his jaw that was now always clenched, never relaxed. He tilted his head slightly to the right, trying to make it sit straighter on his shoulders. Everything he did now had to be just right.

Cecilia raised her chin slightly, her mouth closed, her eyes no longer as wide as they had been a moment ago. “Shall we sit down?” Her gaze never left his face.

“Yes, of course,” Robbie replied almost instantly. He reached up, removing his hat, the wrinkle between his brow vanishing as he looked away from her. The pain of seeing her again was still present. It was slightly less when he looked away.

For a moment, his eyes searched the patrons as he took his bag off his shoulder. He set it on the ground as he sat and set his hat to the left of his teacup, already placed in front of him. It struck him then that he hadn’t had tea in three and a half years. How would it taste now after so long of living off nothing but bread and water?

Cecilia poured his tea and, again, Robbie’s gaze went up to her, staring at her impassive expression. He could tell from the way her lips were pursed that her jaw was set too. It startled him to think she might be as at war with her emotions as he was with his and then worry replaced the shock almost as quickly as it had come. What was she thinking? What was she feeling? Was she regretting meeting him? Was she afraid to see him? Was she scared of what would happen between them? Or was she happy and terrified to show it? All of these options seemed as likely as the last and Robbie felt anguish as he realized he couldn’t decipher which of these it was.

Once Robbie had been able to read Cecilia with the clarity of bright daylight. Now, it seemed, he didn’t know her at all.

He blinked twice, quickly, his gaze going back to his white teacup, full of steaming brown tea.

Three years had done more damage than he’d realized.

Cecilia set down the matching teakettle, her hand hovering above the silver sugar dish.

“I’m sorry,”she began, the hint of a smile in her voice, “I can’t remember, I’m afraid...”

Robbie looked up at her again. “Two, thank you.” He didn’t smile. He felt he’d forgotten how.

Cecilia stared at him, something passing across her face, something that looked like pain or regret, the smile still lingering on her lips. Then she nodded. Twice, quickly. The tinysugar spoon dumped two equally small piles of sugar into the cup.

Robbie looked quickly away again. The pain of it all was too much.

He lifted the teaspoon resting to the left of the saucer and began to stir his tea, staring into the murky depths of the liquid as he did. He couldn’t tell if Cecilia’s regret was from meeting him or from something else. But what else could she possibly have to regret other than that? She had become a nurse. She had, all on her own, been supporting herself for a little over a year now. She was beautiful and unchanged and still just as wonderful as he remembered. There was nothing for her to regret. Nothing at all. Except, perhaps, meeting him here, writing to him for three and a half years, waiting for him when she could have just as easily written him off and moved on.

Frankly, he didn’t blame her for feeling this way. He didn’t –

A hand, very gently and tentatively covered his free one, the one that had been resting on the table to the right of his teacup. For a moment, Robbie was able to keep moving his teaspoon through his tea, but then suddenly it was too much and his hand slowly came to a stop. As if in slow motion, iut fell away from the spoon, dropping it in the cream colored cup. His thumb caught briefly on the gold rim before collapsing to the tabletop as his breath left him in a _whoosh!_ and his eyes closed.

His eyelids fluttered.

Three and half years.

Three and a half years he had gone with no gentle touch from anyone. Feeling it now was too much for him to bear. It felt incorrect, wrong, and so very, very good.

His lips parted for a moment as he struggled to hold back the tears that were beginning to swim in his eyes. He pulled his hand away, moving it out from under Cecilia’s. He placed it atop hers briefly, barely touching her at all, before picking up the teaspoon again this time with his right hand, wanting to prevent the same thing from happening again. He moved the spoon around the cup once more then tapped it lightly against the edge of the gold rim, a soft tinkling sound ringing through the silence between them, before he set it down again on the saucer. He picked up the cup by the delicate handle, still using his right hand, refusing to look Cecilia in the eye, instead gazing out across the cafe as he asked in the formal voice from before, “Where are you living?”

Cecilia’s hand remained on the table where he’d left it, lying flat on the coarse white cloth as he took a sip of his tea. She took a breath, about to say something, thought better of it, swallowed, and began again: “A tiny flat in Balham, it’s ghastly.” The ghost of a smile became a full on girlish grin as she spoke, her eyes flicking to him. “The landlady’s rude and horrible nosy.”

He looked at her again. She was smiling widely now, but something about it looked incorrect, wrong, like she was simply putting on a show for his benefit.

“You look...the same, apart from the uniform, of course,” he said, his eyes never leaving her face. He wanted that smile to disappear, for her to transform back into Cee, the girl he had loved since with all his heart since childhood.

The smile _did_ disappear, but what took its place was almost worse. Her gaze shifted back to the tablecloth as she said in a quiet voice, “I’m so sorry, I have to go back to the hospital in half an hour.”

“Oh god, that’s...” But Robbie broke off before he could his dismay could become a full on sentence, feeling the tears that had been there a moment before show themselves, harshly apparent in his shaking tone.

He could tell from Cecilia’s expression she heard them too and, for a fraction of a second, he stared at her, watching her eyes change, her lips part. Then just as quickly he looked away again, forcing the tears back, swallowing the lump in his throat, though it threatened to reappear every single moment afterwards. The wrinkle found its way back between his brows.

Half an hour. That was nothing. Thirty minutes. Thirty minutes that were already very quickly and quietly ticking away. He had nearly a whole day left in London and, of all that time, he would only get to be with her for a painful thirty minutes.

His weather worn heart shattered once more.

“Sorry.” Cecilia’s voice broke him out of his thoughts. She sounded as tearful as he felt.

His gaze snapped back to her face and he said, without hesitation, shaking his head slightly, “No.” This wasn’t her fault. She couldn’t control this. A familiar pang of guilt slammed through him. Cecilia had been through enough. He didn’t need to add to it.

Her head turned slightly. She seemed to be attempting to master herself as he had only moments before.

“Have you been in touch with your family?” he asked gently, trying to steer the conversation towards something that was, hopefully, more pleasant.

Her head turned towards him. “No, I told you I wouldn’t,” she replied, her tone half breathless.

Robbie’s brows drew together and his lips pressed into a thin line, fractured emotions warring within him once more. One sick, horrid part of him was glad of this. Her family had been instrumental in putting him in jail under false pretenses. But another larger part of him felt horribly sad. Had she cast her family aside for him? The guilt returned, doubled by both the fact a part of him felt pleased of her decision and by the idea that she may have done it for him.

She turned from him again and her false smile reappeared. “Leon waited outside the hospital last week, I just pushed past him.”

“Cee, you don’t...owe me anything,” he said firmly, his eyes never leaving her face once. The lump in his throat had come back. What had he ever done to deserve a woman as good and gracious as her? Did she really still love him that much? How could she? So much time had passed. So much had happened, not one bit of it good.

The smile vanished again. “Robbie didn’t you read my letters.” Her tone now was almost angry, but this time he knew where her anger came from and it only made the lump in his throat grow as he tried to swallow past it: she was appalled he would think for even a moment that she still didn’t care for him, that she would allow her family to get away with what they had done.

“Had I been allowed to visit you, had they let me, everyday I would’ve been there, everyday!”

The tears filled his eyes and this time Robbie was unable to keep them at bay as he spoke. “Yes, but...” He broke off struggling to find the words, swallowing hard; struggling to keep the tears from falling, his mouth contorting from the effort, his teeth clenched, his eyes shifting back to the table, the pain of looking at her overwhelming him once again, “if all we have...rests on a few moments in a library,” his eyes went back to her face, then just as quickly left it, “three and a half years ago, then I’m not sure.”

“Robbie, look at – ”

He took a breath, cutting her off. “I don’t know if...” He caught himself again, sucking in another breath. How had so much time passed so quickly? How had the world fallen apart in less than two hours so long ago? How much would be different if it hadn’t?

“Robbie, look at me,” Cecilia said, her voice soft, gentle.

It only served to make the tears harder to hold back. His face contorted. He blinked rapidly.

_ Cecilia…_

She still loved him. He could hear it in her voice. No part of him could fathom how this was even possible, how he could even deserve it.

“Look at me,” she said it again, her voice even softer than before.

And this time he did. His gaze moving from the tabletop to her face, his lower lip trembling, struggling to keep himself from coming apart in front of her.

“Come back,” she said softly, her voice breaking on the last word. “Come back to me.”

He made a small noise in his throat, the beginning of words, but they never escaped his lips. Cecilia’s face now looked as tormented as he felt, though his tears had been sucked back into him somehow. She leaned forward, her lips making a sympathetic _Oh_ shape without ever saying the word. He reached forward and this time it was he who took her hand, wrapping his fingers around hers and clutching them so tightly that some distant part of him was afraid he might be hurting her. Her free hand came up and touched his face.

He pressed into her touch.

Three and a half years, he had only been touched with violence. Three and half years, he had been treated as some less than human thing. Now Cecilia held him, caressed him, like he was worth loving, like he was more than what they’d made him out to be, and it was all at once too much for his broken, tattered heart to bear.

His eyes closed, his lips parted, and again all his breath escaped him all at once.

_Dearest Cecilia…_

_ Dearest...Cecilia…_

_ Cecilia…_

Half an hour vanished in the blink of an eye and all too soon, he was replacing his hat and picking up his bag, while Cecilia put on her own hat and swung her deep navy coat over her shoulders, buttoning only two of the big shiny black buttons in the center of her torso. As they left the cafe’s building, she clutched his hand to her chest as she walked out of the building and down the street towards her bus stop, her fingers caressing the back of his palm as she walked. Every now and then she looked away from him, but for the most part, her eyes never left his face. Neither one of them seemed entirely sure they hadn’t stumbled into some bittersweet dream.

“Friend of mine has a cottage by the coast,” she told him, a hint of desperation in her voice. “Said we can borrow it when you’re next on leave.”

Robbie’s lips parted in excitement and awe at the suggestion. He’d never seen the ocean. He would soon, of course, when he shipped out to France, but that memory, he knew would be tainted by the reasons behind it.

How wonderful would it be to see it once he came home with Cecilia?

_If you get home_, a voice reminded him.

He tried to ignore it.

“It’s white clapboard with blue painted window frames,” Cecilia was telling him now.

She dropped his hand and turned to him as they reached the bus stop.

“I hope this bus never comes,” Robbie said honestly. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the bus caught a flat tire? Was delayed for hours upon hours? If she could stay with him until he had to leave for France five and a half hours from now?

But he wasn’t that lucky. He hadn’t ever been that lucky. And the expression on Cecilia’s face told him she was thinking the same thing.

Quickly, she dug a picture out of her pocket and handed it to him. It was of the cottage she had just described, the white cliffs of Dover standing out starkly in the background.

“Something to think of while you’re away,” Cecilia said, her hands going to cover his as he took the picture between his fingers.

He could see the sea rushing to shore in front of the cliffs, could almost hear the sound of it if he concentrated hard enough. It was beautiful. He would come back to her. He would come home. So they could go there together. Maybe stay there for a while too if they were very, very lucky.

He looked up at her, a ghost of a smile on _his_ lips this time.

She stared into his eyes, her lips contorted in something that was halfway between a smile and desperate grimace. She let out a gasp of a sob.

And then he was kissing her and she was kissing him right back, kissing him as she had kissed him three and half years ago in the library, kissing him as though she might never see him again because they both knew that was a distinct possibility, one they could not escape no matter how many promises they made, no matter what they said. Her hands roved over him and his fingers tangled in her hair, feeling the silky strands between them. When she finally pulled away, they were both gasping, both staring into each other’s eyes, trying to memorize each other’s faces. Who knew how long he’d be gone? Who knew if he’d ever come back?

She kissed him one last time, then broke away quickly as though terrified if she didn’t now she never would. Robbie stared at the ground, gasping for air, trying to gather himself, trying to realize all over again that Cecilia loved him, truly loved him. She didn’t see some broken withered thing, she saw him, Robbie Turner, a human man deserving of love. And as she jumped onto the back of the bus, clinging to the handrail, staring back at him as the bus took off down the street, he nodded once and said, his tone sure and confident, “I love you.”

Then the confidence and surety leeched from him in a single moment and the realization that _he_ might never see _her_ again took hold and he gasped, tore his hat from his head, and took off down the street after the bus, his gaze never leaving hers, his expression now set, determined to catch up to the bus that was falling farther and farther ahead of him.

Cecilia looked on the verge of tears and he saw her shake her head, nearly imperceptibly once, knowing he would never catch up to the bus.

And she was right. He never did. A moment later the bus turned a corner and was gone and Robbie was once again left alone.

He gasped for air, staring after the bus, slowly coming to a stop in the middle of the road, more buses and several cars passing by him. He let out a heavy breath, turned around once and then back in the direction the bus had gone.

Cecilia had slipped through his fingers once more.

Once more he would have to wait to see her.

Once more there was a chance he never would.

He headed for the post office, intent upon asking her address, so he could write to her instantly, give her the way to reach him.

Her letters had been all that kept him alive whilst he was in jail.

He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, they would be all that kept him alive now that he was going to war.

_Come back. Come back to me._

_I will __return__, _he swore again, walking with purpose towards the post office. _I will find you, love you, marry you, and live without shame._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love this scene so much. i had to write it out. originally it was going to stand on it's own, but i decided it would serve as the prologue to the fic itself. i hope you enjoy it <3


	2. Interlude: Letters – January 24th, 1940 (Dearest Cecilia…)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i decided that between proper chapters i will have either letters or a memory of both robbie and cecilia's past. i am very excited about this.

_January 24th, 1940_

_Somewhere in France_

_Dearest Cecilia,_

_I joined the army to escape prison, to save what little was left of myself and my life, and to, hopefully, find my way back to you when all the fighting is over. I realize only now, trapped here in a foreign country, speaking a language that is not my own, that I have simply gone from one cell of violence to another._

_ The Germans bomb the cities here as carelessly as they do our own. They say they’re occupying France peacefully, but every day I see more men die. Every day I see women and children who have no part in this war tortured by wounds that make grown men scream in pain and horror. It is etched into my eyelids and I see it all every time I close them. _

_ I can’t escape it._

_ I fear I never will._

_ I know that I left parts of me – broken, damaged, ruined parts – back in my cell in the prison I was taken to after Briony accused me of...what she did (I still cannot say it, even to this day; I did not do it, but the knowledge that so many believe I did tears me apart in ways I never knew I could ever be torn). And I know that, once I am sent home, I will leave parts of me here as well, both of which I know I will never get back._

_ When I was in jail, your letters were all that kept me sane. Alive. At night when all the others were asleep, I would take them out of my pillowcase and press them to my chest, imagining your warm arms around me as I struggled to find my way into sleep. I do the same now except I keep your letters next to my heart always. I know they will keep me safe and sane and alive as I fight here, doing terrible things all in the name of my own freedom._

_ It all feels terribly selfish._

_ So many of the men here are fighting because they want to defend our country, they want to make the world a better place and here I am, fighting to get home to you, to be free._

_ And the worst part is, I might not even be granted my freedom when I return. There is every chance they will not grant me parole and I will, again, be thrown into jail to rot and die._

_ Truly I fear this more than anything else. _

_ I know returning to prison will kill me. _

_ I swear on my life, Cecilia, that I will return from this war. I swear I will return. I will put things right. I will, if it’s the last god-forsaken thing I ever do._

_ I will come back to you. _

_ I love you more than life itself_

_ Yours forever and always,_

_ Robbie_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm not sure what else i will have be said in the letters. i feel it may get a bit repetitive. anyhow, i hope i can do this properly!!


	3. Small Great Things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i changed the title of this fanfiction because it fits better, but i'm still not entirely happy with it. i may change it again.

_June 1st, 1940_

_London, England_

Thick, warm summer sunlight shone brightly through the large rectangular windows that dominated the far walls of the east facing whitewashed rooms of the wards of St. Albans Medical Center in Balham, England. It spilled across the shining white linoleum tiles and crawled its way up the white metal legs of the beds lining the rooms to bathe the occupants with its warmth.

The large clocks on the left hand walls told the world it was a quarter past noon, the second hand ticking its slow way around the clock face, the minute hand following at a much slower pace, crawling quietly towards the large twelve at the top of the clock.

Most of the patients of the hospital were still asleep, exhausted by various wounds and illnesses. The young nurses that worked the wards, darted back and forth between identical rooms to clean out bedpans, mop floors, straighten sheets, and check IV drips, each one every so often dipping into the lavatories in each long hallway, scrubbing their fingers clean. It was far too easy to get sick working in a hospital and they all knew that every hospital from here to Dover and back again already had their bloodstained hands full with more than they could reasonably bear.

However, despite all the nurse’s careful washing, despite their handling of the bedpans and sick patients, ever with caution, illness did not discriminate and did not care whether you were a nurse or a solider or a wealthy woman or a child on the street, and be it now or later, it came for every single one of them eventually in one way or another.

It was a lesson Cecilia Tallis had to learn the hard way.

Growing up in a remote section of England where her family had enough land to make traveling to their home a bit of a trek no matter where you lived, had kept her from getting sick. Most of the time. As with every child who doesn’t want to listen, there were the runny noses in winter when she didn’t come in from the snow soon enough, the colds in summer when she didn’t dry off properly after a swim in the lake, and the occasional flu that everyone in the household got when a maid came into work when she shouldn’t have, desperate for pay.

None of that had prepared her for this.

It had started small. A simple cough that could’ve been nothing at all and exhaustion that could’ve been attributed to her long hours working as a ward sister. And if it had stopped there, that might’ve been all that it was.

But it didn’t stop there. It got worse. So much worse.

It was the exhaustion that crippled her first, making her late for shifts, then forcing her to phone the hospital and tell them she couldn’t come in altogether. After this happened three days in a row, the woman who hired her suggested she go to the doctor. Cecilia had ignored this suggestion, thinking that maybe just one more day of rest would make it go away. And for two whole weeks it had.

Then the coughing began again.

It was twice as bad as it had been to start out with, making her double over, her hand pressed to her mouth as she hacked into her palm, her eyes watering from the force of it, her other hand clutching her mop or at the wall or a chair to keep herself from collapsing completely. After, she would always straighten, pulling at the edges of her uniform, tugging out the wrinkles. She would blink, patting at her hair, and then she would smile at the people who always stared, reassuring whoever was closest to her that she was fine, she’d never felt better.

No one ever believed her.

And, in truth, she hardly believed herself.

The coughing escalated until one day she found herself coughing in the hall, halfway finished with mopping the white tiles to gleaming, she pulled her hand away from her mouth to find a small circle of dark red where her lips had been pressed only moments before. For a moment, she’d thought it was just her lipstick, as bright red as blood, badly smeared by her coughing, but a hardly needed closer look told her this wasn’t the case at all. What was on her palm was a thick liquid. Lipstick was thick, but it most definitely wasn’t a liquid. Still, it took her a moment to admit to herself what it was.

Her own blood.

Even so, and foolishly at that, she’d ignored it, washing the blood from her skin, watching it swirl in the water, turning it pink, telling herself it was nothing, just a broken blood vessel in her throat from how viciously she’d been coughing.

But even then she knew. She knew the truth. She knew what this was.

It wasn’t until, finally, she collapsed in front of several of her fellow nurses, falling to the floor, unconscious before she even cracked her head against the bright white linoleum, that she was unable to hide from the agonizing truth any longer. When she awoke in one of her own hospital wards what felt like hours or perhaps days later, she was told the actuality she’d, really, always known.

Consumption. Tuberculosis. Phthisis. The disease of dry seasons. In the end, it didn’t really matter which named you knew it by. It all meant the same thing.

Death.

And a slow, painful, bloody one at that.

When the doctor had told her, his head bowed, his brows drawn together, Cecilia couldn’t help thinking that it seemed to pain him more to know her fate than it did her. She’d known for weeks. She’d known it since the coughing had gotten bad. And now, having her suspicions confirmed after so long, she felt noting at all. The shock of it had long since warn off and she didn’t fear death. Since a child, she’d dreamed of it, the thought of it welcoming in a way she’d never admitted to anyone else. She almost had to stop herself from shrugging her shoulders at the news.

So she was going to die. So what? Everyone died eventually. Men were dying overseas every day. Children were dying from bombs every day. There were people in this very hospital that would die before the day was done. Why be sad about her own demise? Dying didn’t make her special or more tragic than anyone else. It was a simple fact of life.

The only thing she felt sad about was consumption killed its victims quickly. Robbie would come home and she would likely already be gone. They would never have their time together and, even if they did, there was no longer any scenario in which it wouldn’t be cut short.

_Robbie._

Even in her sleep, she sighed gently, reaching under her pillow, her fingers closing around the stack of letters he had written her whilst in France, held together by a fraying bit of twine.

It had been six months since she’d last seen him and then for only thirty minutes.

Thirty precious minutes that had come and gone so quickly that later she wondered if she’d dreamt them. The only proof she had it’d happened at all were Robbie’s letters and his constant assurance at the end of each one that he would return, take her to the cottage by the sea in Dover, and they’d be married.

Neither of them mentioned the fact he would most likely be sent back overseas, the fact he could be jailed again once the war was over.

The fact he could die in France.

Each reality was too painful for either one of them to bear and Cecilia knew that if he were jailed again, if she lost him again, it would be what killed her, whether or not she was ill.

The minute hand of the clock on the wall had moved from the large three to the nine on the other side of the clock face, the hour hand now hovering between twelve and one. The second hand ticked steadily on, the sound of it twice as apparent and three times as loud in Cecilia’s nearly empty ward. But she slept on. She slept until the minute hand reached the large twelve again and the hour hand was pointed resolutely at the one next to it, and even then she only began to stir because of the commotion that began in the lower level of the hospital as a convoy of buses and ambulances and large white vans arrived from the coast.

The sound of frantic voices and shouting, of moans of pain and blood curdling screams permeated the thick wall of unconsciousness that had fallen over Cecilia like a shroud near ten o’clock the night before. She squeezed her eyes shut tight for a moment, shifting in the bed, rolling over away from the light of the windows, hoping to fall back into oblivion, not wanting to wake quite yet, but to no avail. Finally, she rubbed her eyes with her fingers like a child and blinked herself awake.

She could hear the disturbance on the lower floors, but it wasn’t until it began all over again as they started bringing new patients up to where there was more room that she finally caught enough glimpses and snatches of conversation to know what was happening.

The soldiers who had been waiting for evacuation on the beaches of Dunkirk for the past week had finally been rescued and a whole troop of them had been brought here.

She sucked in a small gasp.

_Robbie. _

He would be in one of these troops either here or at another hospital.

She threw back her blankets and started to get up before a nurse came around the large curtained partition someone had put up between her and the bed to her right, saying, her hands outstretched, trying to push Cecilia back into the pillows, “No, Miss Tallis, you know you can’t get up. You’re quite sick. Your IV –”

But that was all the further the nurse got before Cecilia said, “I can’t stay here anymore. I have to find someone. I have to see if he’s here. Do you know the names of the other hospitals the soldiers have been brought to?”

The nurse ignored her statement saying, “You must rest. You could aggravate your lungs. If you end up needing surgery, it could be quite dangerous.”

Cecilia wanted to scream in frustration, wanted to tell the nurse she didn’t care what would happen to her. What happened to her no longer mattered. She had to find Robbie. She shook with the weight of the realization that he was no longer overseas. He was here. Somewhere in England. Somewhere in London too, most likely. Maybe even here in this very hospital. And the worst part was, she was trapped, tethered to this bed by a tube and a needle stuck into her hand.

She tried one last time.

“Please…I must find him,” she said, clutching at the nurse now with a ferocity she hadn’t even known she possessed. “His name is Robbie Turner. He’s a private. He’s in A Company of the First Battalion. Can you...please at least look? Or ask? I need to know where he is.”

For a moment, the nurse was frozen, staring down at Cecilia with wide eyes, her own hands shaking nearly as much as Cecilia’s were. Then she swallowed, regained some of her composure, and nodded. “Yes,” she said, her voice a faint gasp. “Yes, I’ll look. Just...wait here. Rest. I’ll be right back.”

This time, Cecilia settled back against the pillows, doing as she was told, though every part of her wanted to rip the IV out of her hand, run down the halls, and look at the intake forms herself.

There was a wince and a gasp from the bed next to her, the one hidden by the thick red curtained partition. Then there was a groan and soft voice that said, “Hello? Is there anyone there? I-I really need a drink of water.”

In an instant, her head snapped to the curtains, so heavy they didn’t even move as a gust of wind blew in from the opened windows even further down to her right.

She knew the voice, had heard it since she was a child in every single one of her dreams, had heard it for months now in her head as she read words scribbled to her in black ink on cream paper.

What were the odds that was the voice she was hearing now?

But it couldn’t be. It couldn’t be. That’d be too easy. And after all that had happened, after all she and that voice had been through in the last four years, she knew nothing in her life was ever meant to be easy. It had to be wishful thinking, a hallucination brought on by stress and too much hope.

“I need to speak to someone,” the voice called, a little louder now. There was a rustling as blankets were pushed back. “You see, I need to use your phone. I have to phone someone as soon as I can. It’s very important.”

Cecilia sucked in a breath.

She couldn’t believe it. She wouldn’t. She had to see for herself.

Her fingers curled around one end of the curtain, gripping the thick velvety material between them. She took a breath, one that she didn’t even realize she kept in her chest as she, very slowly, pulled the curtain back.

There was a man sitting in the bed on the other side of the curtain. A man with thick brown hair and bright blue eyes. He had five o’clock shadow and a bandage on his bare chest. He was thin enough she could see the outline of his ribs and pale enough his skin was nearly grey. There was an IV pole standing next to his bed as well, full of fluid similar to the one in her IV. He wore only a pair of hospital pajama pants and when he saw her his eyes widened and he froze, sucking in a breath much in the same way she had moments before.

He’d changed a lot since Cecilia had last seen him, but she recognized him all the same. She recognized him by his voice, his breathing.

She would know him in the dark.

Her breath left her in a _whoosh!_, one word leaving her with it:

“_Robbie_...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was originally going to make this longer with both of their perspectives, but i changed my mind because of my desire to add in memories and letters in between, so robbie's perspective is coming!! just you wait!!


	4. Interlude: Memories - Two Figures By A Fountain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was not meant to take so long, but life has a funny way of getting in the way of writing so here we are.

_June 1st, 1935_

_Shropshire, England_

It was the hottest day of the year and it didn’t seem to matter how many windows were opened or how many fans were turned on, the air in the Tallis mansion remained warm and wet enough that Cecilia felt she may as well put on her bathing suit and swim through it.

It seemed that it was the closed walls that kept in this stickiness and the moment she discovered the shade outside was cooler than the shade inside, she decided to spend as much of her time until dinner as possible out of doors.

She put on her thinnest blouse, smallest slip, and shortest skirt with sandals and ran out the door, heading for the thickets of trees and brush that grew close enough together to create shade she could wander around in comfortably and barely be touched by the scorching sun. Her fun was interrupted on her way out the door, however, when her sister begged her to spend time with her on the lawn, so Cecilia grabbed a book and followed Briony out to the grass, listening to her woes and anxieties about all that could possibly go wrong involving her newly finished play and their cousins who she was bullying into helping her put it on, playing the called for parts. Nevertheless, once Briony went inside, intending to put her powers of direction to good use until dinner that evening, Cecilia snapped her tedious book shut and headed out into the brush, vowing not to return home until she had gathered up a bouquet beautiful enough for the hand-painted vase in the parlor.

Though Cecilia hated living with her family and hated the mansion and all the wealth it represented for various reasons that she neither enjoyed thinking about nor explaining, she was thankful for the acres and acres of land that her family owned outside of the mansion’s many expensively carved and papered walls. It was a completely different world, one of possibility instead of conformity. One that didn’t seem to constantly be choking her, holding her in place, forcing her into a life she had never asked for and, as she got older, wanted less and less.

It allowed her to experience something she had never once felt inside the exquisite walls of the mansion: freedom.

She ran through fields, shaded by the canopies of various trees, gathering a diverse assortment flowers and brush sprigs, until her fingers could barely fit around the thick cluster of slowly dying plant life now clutched between them. Then she turned on her heel and ran back through the tall grasses to the mansion, enjoying the exhilaration of the wind in her hair, the burning of her lungs in her chest, dreading only the moment the building she called her home would come back into view and she would be slammed, viciously and all at once, back into her gilded cage.

When she entered the kitchen, the walls as verdant as the foliage outside, the viridescent light coming through the windows serving only to make them appear even more so, it was a flurry of activity, every person in the room working to prepare the dinner that would be served to herself and her family later that night. She passed Grace Turner, the mother of Robbie Turner, her friend since childhood. She gave the woman only a cursory glance before heading up the stairs to the foyer where she found the twins, running in opposite directions around the table at the center of the room, their small pudgy fingers clutching their bathing suits between them.

“Cecilia! Cecilia!” one of them called, darting away from the table to run alongside her for a moment. “Please can we got for a swim, Cecilia?”

“Yes, I don’t see why not,” she said in a breathless voice, glancing between the two redheaded boys, sounding more curt than she’d meant it to.

The boys darted out of the large oak front doors and pounded down the front steps, their sandals clattering against the stone, Cecilia calling after them over her shoulder as she turned to enter the parlor, “Don’t go out of your depth!”

Of all the roomrs in the house, the parlor was where the guests were entertained most often and for good reason. The color scheme of the room was ivory and as such everything in the room itself was brilliant shades of white or cream and wildly expensive. The couches were white patterned with small flowers. The fireplace was carved marble set into the right hand wall. The lamps had dirty pale yellow and orange fringed silk shades, adding a bright accent to the room that managed to not appear out of place. The walls were marble paneled rather than wood and the paper covering them was similar to that of the patterns on the couches. The only dark spot in the room was the brown oak baby grand piano, which, like the lamps, also appeared as though it belonged despite not adhering to the room’s color scheme, upon which rested a magnificent porcelain vase, hand-painted and decorated in such a way that it looked more of a flower itself rather than a thing meant to hold them. Even as she placed her own exquisite bouquet into it, she found it seemed less splendid than it had when she’d originally gathered it, the vase itself outshining the blossoms it was meant to be serving.

For a moment, she tried to rearrange the flowers, thinking that perhaps bringing the more exotic ones to the front of the bouquet would make the vase look less glorious, but all it did was bring out the vase’s own unique appearance all the more. Sighing, Cecilia gave up her venture and rested her arms on the piano, bending over the edge of it to see its inner workings Reaching out one hand, she plucked at one of the strings with the tip of her finger, a high pitched note echoing briefly through the empty room.

It seemed her attempt to create a beautiful bouquet for her brother had failed miserably due to her own ludicrous misjudgment of the vase’s beauty.

Pushing herself up off the piano, she crossed the room to the couch by the window and began unbuckling her sandals, her blistering, sweaty feet breathing twin sighs of relief as the shoes clattered heavily to the hardwood floor.

A soft noise just outside the opened window made her snap her head in that direction.

Cecilia sucked in a breath, turning away almost immediately.

On the large stone steps leading down to the back lawn sat Robbie Turner, wearing a blue button up as shockingly blue as his eyes and the sky above him, facing away from her, doing something she couldn’t see from her vantage point.

The sight of him infuriated and exhilarated her for reasons she could neither identify nor understand. Such had been the nature of every inch of her feelings towards him ever since school ended and summer began.

Cecilia had known Robbie her entire life. She didn’t have one memory she could easily recall that didn’t also involve her already having him in her life. She had gone to primary school with him and grammar school. They’d even gone to university together, though she had ignored him during most of their time there.

There was a good reason for this, but it wasn’t one she liked to dwell upon.

Doing so would be to acknowledge those feelings to begin with.

And lately those feelings had morphed quite spectacularly into anger. Every time she saw him or spoke to him, she felt an inexplicable rage that she never could seem to tamp down, no matter how hard she tried nor promised herself before those interactions that she was going to.

It was easier, perhaps, to feel the fury than to confront the reason behind it.

Cecilia’s eyes darted across the hardwood floor, thinking quickly. Her eyes snapped to the vase atop the piano and all at once it came to her.

The vase needed water or the flowers inside would surely die before her brother even arrived a few hours from now. There was water in the fountain. The fountain was down the stone steps directly behind her and across the burning lawn.

She stood, pulled the vase off the piano top, cradling it securely in the crook of her left arm.

On her way out of the parlor, she stopped in front of the mirror by the door and examined her reflection. She stood up a little straighter and attempted to tuck a stray curl out of her eyes, but it continued to bounce back into place. After a moment of fighting with it, Cecilia let out a heavy sigh and gave up, walking back out of the house and telling herself yet again, _You won’t lose your temper this time. You’re going to have a pleasant conversation with him, that’s all. That’s all._

But even as she thought it, it felt a lie. Even in her own mind.

* * *

The sun beat down on the earth, baking everything that its rays touched. As Robbie sat on the blotchy stone steps in the blessed shade the high walls of the mansion provided, rolling himself a cigarette, he squinted out at the lawn and wondered not for the first time how on earth the grass managed to stay so green during the summer, especially with temperatures like this lasting for days on end. He himself was sweating very unattractively and was about ready to head home. He was done with his work for the day and, though he could’ve already been home by now, he was lingering for reasons even he couldn’t quite determine.

Well, that wasn’t true. He knew why.

Cecilia.

He was hoping to see Cecilia. Perhaps speak with her if he were lucky enough.

He had seen her earlier, lying in the grass as he wheeled the barrow down the gravel path to the flower beds, tending to the blossoms, he’d planted that spring, aweeding them, watering them, making sure they remained as dazzling as was possible in this sort of heat. It should’ve been enough to simply see her lying there next to Briony, staring up at the cloudless sky, her thin blouse accentuating her curves perfectly. But Robbie was neither a saint nor a man satisfied with something so inadequate, though by every right he should’ve been. He wanted to speak to her too.

His feelings for her aside, he wasn’t sure why he wanted to speak to her. It seemed every time she opened her mouth in his presence anymore it was to deliver some cutting remark and he couldn’t find the sense in it. They’d been friends as children, as teenagers too, but then university had come and it seemed that had all fallen apart in an instant. Suddenly she wanted nothing to do with him and when they had both graduated and gone home for the summer, the anger had come. Try as he might, it seemed he was only capable of saying the wrong thing.

He knew today would be no different, but that didn’t stop him from hoping.

It was a lost cause, feeling the way he did for her with how enraged at him she always seemed to be, but in his fantasies her fury melted away into desire and everything that seemed to matter to her no longer did and they were together forever, the princess and the pauper madly in love, like something out of one of Briony’s storybooks.

But he knew that was impossible.

Even if she _had_ felt differently towards him, it would still be impossible.

After all, he _was_ the pauper in this scenario and that was all he would ever be. Even if he _did_ manage to become a doctor – a profession far better and more suitable for him to have were he to pursue a girl of such standing – it would never be enough. Nothing he could do would ever be enough.

He would always be the servant in the eyes of her family at least. Always the gardener.

He could never have her.

A soft padding of bare feet on stone could be heard on the steps now and even before Robbie turned his head and looked up he knew who he would see. His leaping heart betrayed her approach. It seemed to know her long before any of his other senses did. It appeared his thoughts had summoned her and now here she was, standing before him, clutching her family’s most expensive vase in one arm, the thing full of flowers.

As exquisite as the vase was, it hardly compared to the creature carrying it.

Robbie let out a breath. Cecilia was elegance in motion and his mind emptied of all thought before he ever had a chance to greet her. By the time he had composed himself, he’d also realized that she was now seeing him at his most unappealing: covered in sweat, smelling more than a bit ripe, and wearing clothes that were not only oversized but now quite dirty as well.

A part of him felt utterly mortified.

The rest of him felt blessed she was even there at all.

It felt like much longer than a fraction of a second that he stared at her in silence, but that was all it could’ve reasonably been before she began to speak: “Do me one of your Bolshevik roll-ups?”

It was meant to be a question, but it wasn’t phrased as such. Perhaps because she knew he would do it for her whether she asked nicely or not. He couldn’t even make himself feel bitter about this as she continued down the stone steps without waiting for him, knowing, like with the question about the cigarette, that he would follow. He hadn’t even spoken yet and already her anger was etched into the soft lines of her face.

A small smile crossed his lips as he pushed himself up and followed her.

He would take her any way he could have her. Even if that meant enduring her fury.

Cecilia glanced briefly out across the lawn before her gaze returned to her feet descending the stone stairs. “Beautiful day.”

“I suppose so, too hot for me,” Robbie replied, licking the edge of the cigarette to seal it.

Cecilia said nothing in response, but he noticed as she turned her gaze towards the lawn again her lips were pressed into a thin line. He hadn’t even spoken ten words to her and already she was furious with him.

Looking up from his own feet, he stared out directly in front of him, deciding to change the subject completely as he asked, “Are you enjoying your book?”

“No, not really,” Cecilia replied, sounding just clannish enough that he knew it was on purpose.

“It gets better,” he assured her.

They stopped on the landing and he handed her the cigarette.

“I prefer Fielding any day,” she said, taking the cigarette between her middle and forefingers.

He pulled his lighter out of his pocket, cupping his hand around the end of it as he lit it for her . Cecilia sucked in air, the sudden air lighting the end of it.

It wasn’t lost on him how intimate a gesture this was.

And in less that a moment it was over.

She pulled the cigarette from her lips and blew the smoke out into his face, her brows drawn together against the bright sunlight that was inescapable even in the shade. “Much more passionate.”

It took him a moment to realize she was finishing her thought from a moment ago.

For a moment, they stared at each other, the smoke lingering between them, then she turned on her heels and headed for the fountain in the middle of the back lawn of the mansion. Robbie smile at his shoes for half a beat before darting after her.

The truth was, Robbie hadn’t enjoyed the book either. He’d found it incredibly boring and even a bit mannish, but he’d read it anyway because he wanted to appear sophisticated. In fact, he’d only read it so he could do exactly that when he’d recommended it to Cecilia. It had shocked him when she’d actually taken the book from him and then proceeded to read it. The fact she found it just as boring as he did delighted him in ways he couldn’t admit to anyone other than himself. He was, after all, supposed to have enjoyed it. At least enough to have recommended it to her.

Cecilia sucked in another lungful of smoke, letting it blow out of the corner of her mouth, her quick impatient strides pulling it away from her, dissipating into the sunbaked air in an instant. “Leon’s coming down today, did you know?”

“I heard a rumor,” Robbie replied, walking around behind her to her other side from and then spinning on his heel to walk backwards, better to see her face on their way to the fountain. There was one curl of hair that had sprung free from all the others and kept falling into her eyes.

He wanted desperately to reach out and tuck it back into place.

“He’s bringing a friend with him,” Cecilia continued, a hint of a smile now gracing her lips. “Paul Marshall, the chocolate millionaire.”

Something about the way she said this made his heart pound excruciatingly in his chest and he couldn’t stop the edge from entering his tone as he asked, “Are the flowers for him?”

Cecilia’s smile grew to a full on smirk. “Why shouldn’t they be?”

Now Robbie felt a fury of his own. Why shouldn’t they be indeed. Hadn’t he just been thinking only moments ago that he could never have her? So why the feelings of ire now? He knew he could never have her and this was only struck painfully home as she added, “Leon says he’s very charming.”

Robbie didn’t reply.

So she would have a chocolate millionaire and he would have nothing.

It was as it should be. And yet every part of it made him want to throw the vase in her arms against the stones and break it into a thousand irreparable pieces.

“The old man telephoned last night, he said you’re planning on being a doctor.”

This time the fury in her voice was unmistakable. Clearly masked, but still clearly there. And as before, Robbie was curiously confused. Why on earth would she care if he wanted to become a doctor? However, still feeling the anger of a moment ago, he said with more pride than he might have otherwise, “I’m thinking about it, yes.”

“Six years of student life,” Cecilia said, her gaze fixed on the fountain.

“How else do you become a doctor?” he asked, his hands curling into frustrated fists in his pockets, his own gaze fixed on his shoes, crushing the grass beneath them as he strode down the lawn.

“You could get a fellowship now, couldn’t you?” she said, turning to look at him for just a moment, her fury still masked but just barely.

“I don’t want to teach,” he replied, this time nearly through gritted teeth.

“With your First.” All pretenses were gone as she all but spit the words at him.

Robbie stopped short as Cecilia continued onward. She was mocking him. He was sure of it. Flaunting her wealth before him, reminding him he was still only a charity case, that he never would’ve made it into university at all had it not been for the generosity of her father. Now he really _was_ angry. How could she say something like that to him? How could she throw that at him like that, knowing very well how it might effect him? All of her current fury aside, they’d been friends for years before that. How could she say this to him now?

“I said I’d pay your father back.” He hated himself for how desperate he sounded.

This time it was Cecilia who stopped short and turned back to him. The look on her face was not at all what he’d though it would be. She appeared just as hurt as he did as she said quietly, “That’s not what I meant at all.”

Now Robbie felt bad. How could he have thought for even a moment that she would be so insensitive towards him? She wasn’t that kind of person. Even at her worst, she wasn’t that kind of person. Still that did leave the question of what she _had_ meant by throwing his top marks at university back at him, but it hardly seemed to matter now. Especially as he realized with a jolt that for the first time in months, she was looking at him without a hint of anger in her eyes and he saw for the first time that there was something beyond the anger, something he couldn’t put a name to that seemed to be the source of everything she had been throwing at him all summer.

But then she turned around and continued on towards the fountain and he was sure he must have just imagined it.

Still, he felt poorly about his accusation and he hurried after her, saying in a much softer tone, “Let me help with that.”

Cecilia was now perched on the lip of the fountain, the vase set down next to her. She was pulling the flowers out of the top of it and didn’t even turn to look at him as she said, her tone once again peeved, “No, I’m alright, thanks.”

“Take the flowers,” he said, sitting next to her, taking one handle of the vase.

“I’m alright,” she insisted.

“Take the flowers.”

“I’m alright!”

“Take the flow –”

Cecilia let out a yelp as the vase broke into four pieces. One – the handle – coming off in Robbie’s hand, another falling into the fountain before slowly sinking to the bottom, and the other two clattering to the concrete below.

Cecilia’s mouth was open in shock, her eyes, still on the vase, slowly sliding up to Robbie’s face. He stared back at her, his own expression strangely impassive, waiting for her reaction.

“Oh, you idiot.”

Robbie couldn’t help it. He grinned and only barely held back a bark of laughter as he turned away and moved off the lip of the fountain and then back several feet until he was on the grass again.

She bent over the fountain’s edge, trying to see to the bottom three feet below where the broken piece now lay. She turned back to him momentarily to shout. “You realize that’s probably the most valuable thing we own!”

“Not anymore it isn’t.” Again he only barely held back his own laughter.

Hadn’t he only been thinking a moment before that he wanted to destroy the vase? And now it seemed he had. His thoughts had power today. But that wasn’t the only reason. Cecilia’s reaction was hilarious in and of itself. It was just a vase. Her family’s most expensive vase perhaps, but still just a vase. It could’ve been so very much worse.

This time Cecilia saw him laugh and she lunged forward, hurtling towards him, ready to perhaps hit him or shout at him some more, but she never got that far. Robbie threw out his arm, the hilarity gone from his face in an instant as his eyes saw the jagged shards on the ground. “Careful!”

On more step and she would’ve been picking the vase out of the bottom of her foot.

She stopped short, but the rage never left her countenance for even a moment. She didn’t look away from him as she threw what was left of her cigarette to the ground and then, absurdly, began to undress, first pulling her blouse up over her head and then unbuttoning her skirt, letting it fall to the ground, so she stood before him in only her slip.

This time Robbie let out a breath of laughter, but it was more of a scoff. Was she serious? He didn’t know what she was thinking, but if this was her way of punishing him, it was uproarious indeed. What did she think this would do? Ruin him forever? On the contrary, seeing her in only her slip made his heart skip a beat and he only barely managed to make himself look down at his hand, in an attempt to give her a fraction of privacy, before he looked up again, still smirking at her, he broken vase’s handle still clutched between his fingers. He tapped it against the fingers of his other hand.

Then she turned away from him, sat down once more on the edge of the fountain, and his smirk vanished entirely as he realized what she meant to do.

The fountain was only three feet deep, hardly able to drown someone a whole two feet taller than that as Cecilia was, but anxiety still filled him as she pushed herself into its depths, the surface barely rippling at all as she sank beneath it.

Robbie stepped forward, trying to see what was happening beneath the surface of the water without getting too close. A cold fear sank into him the longer she was under, telling him she would never come up again, that he needed to save her. There was no logical reasoning behind this, except perhaps lingering fear of the time Briony had jumped into the nearby river to see if he would come to her rescue, but he couldn’t stop the pounding of his heart. When Cecilia finally emerged again, hoisting herself up onto the lip of the fountain, dripping wet, the first thing he registered was a bone-deep relief that he wasn’t going to have to dive in after her.

Then he realized she was dripping wet, her slip now completely see-through and, despite himself, he stared at her. He could see all of her curves now, every single one, much better than he had earlier in the day through her simple blouse. He could see a large bruise on her torso as well. Any other time, he may have wondered how she’d gotten it, but now all he could think about was how it didn’t mar her beauty in the slightest.

She stood on the stone lip of the fountain, defiant, daring him to take every bit of her in and he did, blinking stupidly, his lips slightly parted, his chest heaving.

He didn’t think he’d seen anything more beautiful in his life.

Then she looked away, her gaze going to her clothes, which lay in a heap next to the fountain and Robbie realized he was staring at a woman nearly naked.

Sucking in a breath, he looked down, glanced up at her once more, entirely unable to help himself, then quickly turned away.

He couldn’t help feeling chastened and more than a little guilty. He’d stared for far too long and more likely than not had made Cecilia feel profoundly uncomfortable. He couldn’t see her, turned now such as he was, but he closed his eyes for good measure. Whenever they betrayed him by opening again, he shifted and gazed at the sky, the ground, the concrete on which she stood, her diminishing heap of clothes by the fountain’s base, anything other than her face or her body, before he let out a breath he never realized he was holding and shut them again.

His hand clenched tightly around the broken vase’s handle, his thumb worrying along the grooves in the handle’s edge. He let out a heavy breath, glancing at her with only his eyes, noting, though he tried not to, that she was only just now putting on her skirt.

Everything about this interaction had been ruined by him and the longer he stood there waiting for her to dress, the more he realized it.

At last Cecilia turned, picking up the broken bits of the vase and putting them inside the porcelain figure before cradling it in her arm once more and heading back in the direction of the mansion, her eyes stuck firmly to the ground, her lips pressed again into a paper thin line.

She left the flowers on the fountain’s edge.

As she walked past him, Robbie tried to speak, his lips opening and closing, only managing to get out one syllable before she snatched the broken handle out of his hand and continued on her way across the lawn. Robbie clenched his empty fingers into a fist of frustration, thinking of all the ways this exchange could’ve gone differently had he simply been using his head. His gaze shifted from the grass to her receding figure and he backed away towards the fountain’s lip. He turned again as it hit the backs of his legs and sat just as Cecilia had only minutes ago, leaning over, staring into the depths, seeing the bottom swimming far below.

Reaching out, he placed his hand on the surface of the water, only barely disturbing the surface.

How different the afternoon could’ve gone if he’d only been more clever, less cocky.

How different everything could’ve gone after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes, i do realize atonement is also a book and so this chapter was completely unnecessary, but i also love this scene and wanted desperately to write it out, so here we are. i hope you enjoy!! hopefully the next chapter will be more forthcoming than this one was.


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